Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Printmaking

I have been going to a printmaking evening class at The Edinburgh College of Art since September. It's been excellent and great fun. My first effort (poppy seed heads done in various hues of orange and browns) came out quite well. Some of you lucky people may well receive a print for Christmas.

For my second effort I decided to attempt a print of Table Mountain in Cape Town. Nick and I had a wonderful holiday there last year and the mountain is a truly amazing natural feature of the landscape. So, imagine me - lovingly sketching out the image, transferring it to the wood block, carefully and painstakingly cutting out the wood to form the inking block, setting up the presses, creating the background papers with 4 layers of ink, gradually building up layers of translucent inks, then finally arriving at the crucial point of printing the image of the mountain on my papers.

Bugger. I forgot to reverse the image on the block. First basic rule of printmaking - everything is in negative. I even learnt this at school aged 12 when we did lino printing.

My prints are now entitled: 'Table Mountain as seen through a mirror.'